Building God's Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction

by Armand Roquelaure (De)

Overview

For the last several decades, at the far fringes of American evangelical Christianity has stood an intellectual movement known as Christian Reconstruction. The proponents of this movement embrace a radical position: that all of life should be brought under the authority of biblical law as it is contained in both the Old and New Testaments. They challenge the legitimacy of democracy, argue that slavery is biblically justifiable, and support the death penalty for all manner of "crimes" described in the Bible including homosexuality, adultery, and Sabbath-breaking. But, as Julie Ingersoll shows in this fascinating new book, this "Biblical Worldview" shapes their views not only on political issues, but on everything from private property and economic policy to history and literature. Holding that the Bible provides a coherent, internally consistent, and all-encompassing worldview, they seek to remake the entirety of society--church, state, family, economy--along biblical lines. Tracing the movement from its mid-twentieth-century origins in the writings of theologian and philosopher R.J. Rushdoony to its present-day sites of influence, including the Christian Home School movement, advocacy for the teaching of creationism, and the development and rise of the Tea Party, Ingersoll illustrates how Reconstructionists have broadly and subtly shaped conservative American Protestantism over the course of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. Drawing on interviews with Reconstructionists themselves as well as extensive research in Reconstructionist publications, Building God's Kingdom offers the most complete and balanced portrait to date of this enigmatic segment of the Christian Right.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199390281
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	281,973
File size:	464 KB

About the Author

Julie J. Ingersoll is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at University of North Florida. She is the author of Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles (2003).

Table of Contents

Introduction 1) Christian Reconstructionist Theology 2) Christian Reconstruction as the Groundwork for the Religious Right 3) Building a Reconstructed Society: Gary North's Biblical Blueprint Series 4) Raising a Godly Generation: Christian Schools and Home Schools 5) The Skeleton of a Biblical Worldview: Creationism 6) Doug Phillips and Vision Forum Notes Index